Upstart Wood-Fired Pizzeria in Nothing, Arizona

The town of Nothing, Arizona, sounds like something straight out of Duel, Breakdown, or any number of psycho-stalker-trucker movies. A town in name only, it's basically a shell of a gas station in rural northwestern Arizona surrounded by swaths of federally owned land.

There's no reason to go there—especially now that the former owner sold it and ripped out the gas tanks. But its new owner, Mike Jensen,hopes to make it a destination in part through wood-fired pizza:

A good chunk of Jensen's plan hinges on his pizza. For the past four years, Jensen has made a living driving his mobile wood-fired pizza oven around the West to various events. He has become a mainstay at some annual events and boasts of people waiting in line for two or three hours to get a pie at a NASCAR event.

I love this story. It's yet another perfect example of the rugged (and kooky) individualist spirit that has made for some of America's greatest moments. I would love to see Jensen succeed.

If you want to visit Jensen's pizzeria in Nothing, good luck finding it. According to Wikipedia, it's "located 50 miles north of Phoenix and roughly 20 miles south of Wikieup.... It is west of Bagdad at milepost 148 1/2 on U.S. Route 93... between Wickenburg and Kingman, on the route from Las Vegas to Phoenix."

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About the Author

Adam Kuban is the founder of Slice, where he has been writing about pizza since October 10, 2003. He also founded A Hamburger Today, but burgers don't really do much for him these days. If you find Adam anywhere on SE these days, it's primarily in Talk and in the comments of Slice. He has taken an extended hiatus from his weekly pizza reviews and monthly Home Slice feature while he explores the actual work of pizza-making at Paulie Gee's in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.